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Minnesota Public Radio has a little catch line they like to throw in during station breaks:

"Remember, all music was once new."

Which is true, It's hard to disagree with that. And the implication, that we should give all new music a chance is something I also agree with--for awhile. But I won't listen endlessly in the spirit of tolerance. I won't necessarily listen until I am "used to it," and am on the edge of saying "I like it."

Endless listening and endless tolerance can lead to some strange conclusions. I imagine most of us could get used to the smell of our dirty socks piled up in the bottom of our bedroom closets. After while, if our mom comes in and throws the socks in the washer, we might be left feeling that we miss that smell. Indeed, we like it.

This little cameo of how we come to "like" things can be applied to many issues of art and taste.

I've been trying for years to come up with a better way to validate artistic expression, but I haven't quite got it yet. But I do know that I'm very wary of getting used to something by endlessly and tolerantly listening it.

TomTomasinoakatomasino

I'll speculate very confidently that no composer wants you to listen to his music "endlessly and tolerantly," until you "get used to it" and are kinda-sorta ready to admit that you maybe like it. No one else is asking you to do this either. What some of us do want from people with your attitude (to the extent that we care at all) is a good-faith acknowledgement that if we've grown to love something that you don't like or understand or want to be a part of, it's not because we've merely become accustomed to it, our natural and true perceptions distorted by familiarity or will-power. There is no dirty sock. We are not fooling ourselves, or pretending.

Minnesota Public Radio has a little catch line they like to throw in during station breaks:

"Remember, all music was once new."

Which is true, It's hard to disagree with that. And the implication, that we should give all new music a chance is something I also agree with--for awhile. But I won't listen endlessly in the spirit of tolerance. I won't necessarily listen until I am "used to it," and am on the edge of saying "I like it."

Endless listening and endless tolerance can lead to some strange conclusions. I imagine most of us could get used to the smell of our dirty socks piled up in the bottom of our bedroom closets. After while, if our mom comes in and throws the socks in the washer, we might be left feeling that we miss that smell. Indeed, we like it.

This little cameo of how we come to "like" things can be applied to many issues of art and taste.

I've been trying for years to come up with a better way to validate artistic expression, but I haven't quite got it yet. But I do know that I'm very wary of getting used to something by endlessly and tolerantly listening it.

TomTomasinoakatomasino

I'll speculate very confidently that no composer wants you to listen to his music "endlessly and tolerantly," until you "get used to it," and are kinda-sorta ready to admit that you maybe like it. No one else is asking you to do this either. What some of do us want from people with your attitude (to the extent that we care at all) is a good-faith acknowledgement that if we've grown to love something that you don't like or understand or want to be a part of, it's not because we've merely become accustomed to it, our natural and true perceptions distorted by familiarity or will-power. There is no dirty sock. We are not fooling ourselves, or pretending.

This is what I hate about certain critics of contemporary music. The insinuation that my deep love for music they find distasteful is some sort of affect or the result of submission to constant exposure/study. All the time you hear 'people don't want to hear such and such'. Well I bloody well do, and I'm a person.

I have a very 'live and let live' attitude about music. If I don't care much for Xenakis (heard his Herma for piano the other day... and the point was?), Rap, Republican Country and Western, New Age bilge, well to each his own. Just don't criticize ME, okay?

I have been studying English pre-Reformation liturgical music the last several weeks (there isn't much of it, thank-you Henry VIII), but would not expect anyone here to give a damn. But that is my business.

And yet... the Met Broadcast of Carmen this morning was incredible. Across the board, who could not love music which communicates with such insolent ease?

#2038163 - 02/23/1308:55 PMRe: Do you think there will ever be another great composer?
[Re: JoelW]

Andromaque
3000 Post Club Member
Registered: 08/29/08
Posts: 3886
Loc: New York

Speaking of which, I jjust watched Fanny Ardant play Maria Callas including the Carmen role. I have been looking for the right term to describe her and Jason just nailed it. Gloriously, elegantly insolent!! Insolentissima actually.

PS My first hearing of Carmen during my student dayshad me intoxicated for days ... all those songs aboutToreadors with Habaneras and a dame who sold cigarettes ... pity they all came to a sticky end.(Thank you Mr Bizet)

Also remember that Buxtehude would walk for miles through a snowstorm to hear Bach's music, he so highly regarded his contemporary. Of course we have biases, but I think that there are those composers that are inarguably great, and there's a reason for it in how they composed their craft. I just can't say John Williams or anyone that I've listened to thus far touches on that.

Please get the facts straight, a young Bach walked to hear Buxtehude who was an old man at the time. Here's a link for more information:

One of the musicians who had studied them was the young Johann Sebastian Bach, then employed as an organist inArnstadt, some 400 km south of Lübeck. In 1705, the 20-year old Bach asked his supervisor for four weeks leave to visit Lübeck to “learn one thing and another about his art;” almost certainly it was Buxtehude whom Bach wanted to see. One wonders how he thought he could walk to and from Lübeck and have time to learn much there in just four weeks. He actually spent four months there.

On his return to Arnstadt, Bach was reprimanded for the long absence from his duties and also for confusing the congregation with “strange variations” and “foreign tones” inhis chorales. Indeed, Bach’s compositions for organ changed significantly after his visit to Lübeck, becoming more dramatic and harmonically complex. It is thought that hearingBuxtehude’s music had a profound impact on the developing musical mind of the young Bach, who was essentially self-taught; however, it is not known whether he and the 68-year old Buxtehude actually met.

You are correct, I misremembered the story.

Quote:

As for whether JW's music does it for you try this piece his Song for World Peace.

This last one really shows Williams' mastery of orchestration. The orchestral clarity is wonderful and the photos set with the music made me homesick.

My contention with JW has more to do with the constraints of writing music for film (and the use of assistants) than it does with his talent. I like the pieces you posted above much better than soundtracks, as they sound exactly what we wanted to write rather than fitting something to a screenplay.

#2038456 - 02/24/1301:49 PMRe: Do you think there will ever be another great composer?
[Re: debrucey]

Mark_C
Yikes! 10000 Post Club Member
Registered: 11/11/09
Posts: 21045
Loc: New York

Originally Posted By: debrucey

His mastery of orchestration!? He employs other people to do that for him. As do a most film composers.

Yes, and other people also mentioned that teams are involved in a lot of the work, BUT.....do y'all know that the master artists of the past, I think going back to Rembrandt and probably much further, had assistants who did a lot of the actual painting? If we're going to say this takes away from whatever "greatness" might ever be put on John Williams or anyone else, we're going to have to revise a lot of who we've been considering great for many centuries.

True, but that was specifically a criticism of describing him as a master of orchestration on the same level as Mahler. However good you think he might be as a composer, a master of orchestration he is not.

Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue (both the original jazz band version and the orchestral version) was orchestrated by Ferde Grofé, not by himself - that clarinet solo at the start and all...However, he did orchestrate his Piano Concerto in F.

_________________________
"I don't play accurately - anyone can play accurately - but I play with wonderful expression. As far as the piano is concerned, sentiment is my forte. I keep science for Life."

I'm not going to pretend to be a serious student of contemporary "classical" music, but I've heard a lot of it and liked very little. To my taste, serious composing took a wrong turn somewhere in the Second Viennese School and never really recovered.

That said, I've been very impressed by several of the compositions of John Corigliano. Of any contemporary composer whose work I've heard, he strikes me as one who does many of the good things we appreciate in the "greats" without copying them. Since he teaches too, I'm hoping he can pass on some useful perspectives to students.